In the past decade, mobile communication devices (hereinafter “MCDs”), such as cellular telephones and pagers have taken the world by storm. While voice communication and text messaging remains the dominant area of utilization, in recent years there has been a proliferation of additional services that are offered to users of MCDs by various service providers. These services range from delivery of news or other information in text format, to full interactive services (Internet-based and otherwise), such as web-browsing and games. In most cases, such commercial services are implemented through utilization of the Wireless Application Protocol (“WAP”), which serves as a secure specification for allowing users to access information and utilize interactive services through their MCD. In essence WAP enables utilization of an MCD to access Internet content and services. WAP is advantageous over previously used MCD access techniques because it provides optimization of web-based applications for access by WAP-enables MCDs, taking into account the limited processing power, screen size, and bandwidth of a typical MCD.
However, while WAP is a robust standard and generally works well for utilization of an MCD to access the Internet, it still suffers from a number of drawbacks in the field of provision of interactive commercial services. First, WAP-based applications must be developed, maintained, and operated at a significant expense to service providers. Second, utilization of a WAP-based commercial service involves considerable involvement from a user to navigate through multiple screens of a WAP application, which is often difficult and time-consuming to do using an MCD. This in turn minimizes the opportunity of providing and stimulating impulse purchasing and/or orders from users. Third, WAP requires significant bandwidth and a good communication connection, making utilization of WAP-based services in areas with relatively poor network coverage difficult and frustrating for users.
In the past decade, a different standard for binary and text-based communication over wireless networks has emerged and is in the process of gaining tremendous popularity among both network service providers and users. This standard is called Short Message Service (SMS), initially established over ten years ago as a one way communication platform where operators could send notification messages to their customers, for example to state that the customer has voice mail. SMS, which has evolved into a popular person to person communication format, now enables quick and easy sending and receiving of short text messages (for example around 160 characters in the GSM standard) by MCD users. Typically the cost of sending and/or receiving SMS messages is very small to the user, making SMS a great option for cheap, fast, and efficient communication that is generally less expensive than voice communication. Furthermore, SMS is even more reliable in poor coverage areas than voice communication, due to the fact that SMS communication is queued, and is certainly more reliable than WAP.
It would thus be desirable to provide a platform that utilizes SMS for providing robust commercial services to users of MCDs. It would further be desirable to provide SMS-based commercial services that are inexpensive to design, develop, and maintain. It would also be desirable to provide SMS-based commercial services that are easy for the MCD users to utilize and that encourage impulse orders and purchases.